Keep up with news and features of interest to the reptile and amphibian community on the kingsnake.com blog. We cover breaking stories from the mainstream and scientific media, user-submitted photos and videos, and feature articles and photos by Jeff Barringer, Richard Bartlett, and other herpetologists and herpetoculturists.

Thursday, August 16 2012

Even a hint of Inclusion Body Disease (IBD) makes the skin of any boid keeper crawl. It is a certain death for not only the diagnosed snake but the rest of the animals in your home, because of the inability to properly diagnose and treat the condition. But thanks to Larry, a boa constrictor, that may change.

When a California woman named Taryn Hook brought Larry — all 7 feet (2 meters) of him — to the vet a few years ago, she never imagined that the trip would one day lead to such a remarkable discovery, which was announced today (Aug. 14) in the journal mBio.

IBD afflicts pythons and boa constrictors, causing a host of strange symptoms. The snakes tie themselves in knots, they projectile vomit and engage in an eerie behavior called stargazing; the snakes raise their heads over and over, stare into thin air, and sway drunkenly from side to side.

Biopsies from animals with the disease show their cells filled up with globules of proteins called inclusions, which may be responsible for the odd behaviors.

There's no cure for the disease. It moves swiftly in pythons, and can progress slowly in boa constrictors, but it is always fatal. And it's infectious, moving from snake to snake, though the mechanism of transmission isn't entirely clear. If one animal in a collection gets IBD, typically all the animals are euthanized.

Blood tests had suggested Larry, a Dumeril's boa constrictor, might have IBD. Wanting to know what could be done to save the beloved snake, Hook contacted Joseph DeRisi at the University of California, San Francisco, a virologist known for his work deciphering another mysterious virus, this one affecting macaws and parrots.

Her plea for help led DeRisi's lab to take on IBD. The scientists put out a call for samples of diseased and nondiseased snakes. Perhaps luckily, the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences, just a few miles away, had a sudden outbreak of IBD.

Tuesday, August 14 2012

The question of where exactly snakes evolved has been debated for years. Was it land? Was it sea? Scientists recently determined that snakes did, in fact, evolve on a plane plain.

The new study, published in Wednesday’s online edition of Nature, focuses on remains of the snake species Coniophis precedens, which lived roughly 70 million years ago during the late cretaceous period. While the snake had been described in the scientific literature and remains had previously been collected, those studies had only looked at vertebrae.

In the new report, researchers from Yale and Harvard analyzed the upper and lower jawbones of the snake as well as its vertebrae, and came to the conclusion that the snake was transitional because its head was more similar to a lizard’s than a snake. In particular, this snake lacks the ability to open its jaw wide and swallow prey whole, one of the hallmarks of modern snakes. The ancient snake likely ate small vertebrate animals.

Because the snake’s fossils are from the plains of Montana, the scientists argue that the remains provide strong evidence that modern snakes evolved on land. They suggest that the lizard-like head and long body indicate that early snakes evolved as burrowers.

Monday, August 13 2012

Despite being dubbed the "rarest snake in the world," the recently re-discovered St. Lucia Racer doesn'thave extinction currently in its plans.

In antiquity snakes were revered for their ability to rejuvenate themselves by shedding their skin. One serpent seems to have done just that and returned from extinction on a tiny island near Saint Lucia in the Caribbean.

The Saint Lucia racer was declared extinct in 1936 but was sighted again in 1973. Non-native mongoose, introduced to the Santa Lucia islands by humans, were believed to have driven the snake back into oblivion after that.

The harmless snake recently slithered back from the abyss of extinction when a team of conservationists identified 11 individuals on a small mongoose-free island near the main island of Saint Lucia, reported Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and Miami Herald.

Wednesday, August 8 2012

Smuggle an iguana, go to jail? That's a lesson being learned behind bars by Dirk Bender, who attempted to steal four protected Galapagos iguanas. From Fox news Latino:

Ecuadoran authorities arrested a German man on Sunday for allegedly attempting to pilfer four land-dwelling iguanas from the Galapagos Islands, according to the director of park services.

A judge sent Dirk Bender to jail to prevent him from leaving the country while he awaits trial, EFE reports. If convicted of “environmental crime,” Bender could face a prison sentence of up to three years.

Bender was arrested in the airport on the island of Baltra when guards detected something unusual in his luggage after passing it through an X-ray machine. When they opened it, they found two iguanas wrapped in cloth.

In other news, 150 animals originally smuggled from the Philippines have now been returned from Hong Kong after confiscation in June. From 7thspace:

The reptiles were illegally imported to Hong Kong and intercepted at the arrival hall at the Hong Kong International Airport on June 14, 2012. They were found in a passenger's luggage. A 22-year-old man was prosecuted by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) and sentenced to imprisonment for six weeks.

All the seized species are listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which protects endangered species from over-exploitation through international trade restrictions.

At present, 175 countries are parties to CITES.

The Philippine pond turtles and the Mindanao water monitor lizards are endemic species that can only be found in the Philippines.

Numerous reptiles were also recently stolen from the Moorten Botanical Garden.

"I came out and looked at the little water pond and wow, there were no turtles in there," Moorten told the newspaper. "It's sad, maddening and disappointing."

The list of missing reptiles includes four babies and a 10-year-old, 35-pound African sulcata, Moorten said. The oldest tortoise taken is 40 years old; the largest measures about 16 inches in diameter.

Two baby tortoises were likely in burrows when the thieves struck and were overlooked, Moorten said.